How To Win HQ Trivia With Tips From People Who Have Actually Done It

After the popularity of TV quiz game shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, the smartphone generation has gotten HQ Trivia, a live quiz show app. Since there are real cash prizes to be won in the live rounds that occur twice a day, how to win HQ Trivia is the most important question to answer. Quite simply, to win the cash jackpot (which is divided between all of the users who win), you need to answer 12 questions correctly.

Let's start with the obvious. The game wouldn't be any fun if you could simply google the results; as Bustle writer Caitlin Gallagher has already observed, the ten second window that players have to answer the multiple choice questions means you're unlikely to be able to find the answer on the internet in time. So, since you can't cheat, you'll need to be practical.

Twitter user @markrhirschfeld tweeted a video of him and his friends winning the game. When the camera scans the room, you'll see many people packed in there. If you have a group of friends that you always hit trivia nights with at your local bar, then, in a perfect world, you'd be with them at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST when the game takes place each day (the game only gets one show per day on the weekend at the 9p.m. slot). But if you're at work during the first show and your bosses are gracious enough to allow a 15 minute break for you guys to play the iPhone quiz game, then try and get as many colleagues as possible to participate. Basically, the more brains, the better.

Twitter user @adnys also has a good tip: swiping the comments to the right so the app doesn't crash (presumably if your iPhone's edging towards retirement age). But this also makes sense even if your phone's working flawlessly, because, as entertaining as those comments are, your mind isn't going to be on the questions if you're constantly being distracted. According to a study on how multitasking affects the brain that CNN referenced, even something as innocuous as driving while listening to music led to a decrease in 37 percent in the amount of brain bandwidth devoted to driving. So, this could be the difference between you winning and losing.

Of course, if you scan Twitter to check out who's winning, there are tons of users simply tweeting a summary of the trivia game, urging their followers to download the app and then sneakily asking them to use their personal code to sign up. Why? Because every new user who signs up for the service with another person's code earns the person who was already on the service an extra life. Extra lives mean you can get a question wrong and still advance, so why not try and maximize the amount of errors you can make without flunking the quiz? Use the app when a game isn't in session and hit the invite button or just send your username to use as a sign up code to as many friends, lovers, or family members you can who aren't yet on the service.

Perhaps the best and most simple tip of all is to keep on keepin' on. Like that trivia night at your local bar, keep showing up, even when you lose, so you get a sense of the questions. Be there for both live games — 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., not one or the other. If you don't trust your memory to do the heavy lifting for you, put notifications on so you'll get an alert when the game is starting. The more often you play, the more you increase your chances of winning.

The rest of it's down to you and your grasp on everything from geography to literature. But winning HQ Trivia isn't as impossible as it seems.